Thursday, October 24, 2013

Super Cool Blue Parents

Last week I talked about how incredibly easy it is to be a good parent.

It really takes almost no work.
As an expert quoted in this WebMD article notes, “what mattered to babies a thousand years
ago is still what matters today: You, the parent, are your baby’s best
learning tool.”

Minus smoke-induced deaths, Uhu was a great Mom.

Parenting: The Ug-Uhu-Acho Story

For literally
hundreds of years parents had no real guidance on developmental markers and
strategies. Sure, they received plenty of input from in-laws; you have in-laws, right?

And yet children kept
getting smarter and making scientific discoveries. It isn’t like the Uhu, the Mom whose kid discovered
fire, checked with some stone-based Dr. Sears predecessor. I suppose if she had she would have immediately look over at her heavily
bearded husband Ug, who was undoubtedly playing with his Apple iCore and ignoring the kids, and say, “Ug! Acho
should play Fire now. Go get Acho fire for
play.”

[Note: Depending on the age of Acho in this story, Ahu probably just doomed him to smoke-inhalation death. Keep that in mind.]

So that is the bar - if you mimic or
exceed the parenting of someone constantly on starvation’s doorstep and in fear
of being eaten by a bear, you probably exceed it.

5 Things

How low is the bar? Perhaps the most five most important things
to your baby’s future are things that take almost no work: 1) talk to your baby;
2) play with your baby; 3) pay attention to its interests; 4) use those
interests to foster curiosity; 5) simply love and nurture your baby.

This last is, I
think, especially important. Creating a
loving and safe environment allows your child to be curious and explore without
fearing the loss of love or environment.

So, its easy to get
into that green area in the chart, but you don’t want just an average
child. And anyhow, you want to be the kind of overachieving
Super Mom you know you can be. So how do you get to be “Super Cool Blue” parent?

Super Cool Blue

Truth is, I just don’t
know. I’m certainly not one of
them. But I know that it is exceedingly
hard and likely not worth effort for the small return. Sure, being a “Super Cool Blue” parent might
add some small percentage of advantage to your child. But in a world where W work produces a
perfectly good child (C), why would you want to do 100W in order to produce a
child who was 1.03C?

I suppose
stay-at-home parents probably have some small step in that direction. Money probably helps, mostly because it
alleviates worries and tends to lead to more secure situations. But that cuts both ways, because money can ruin a kid as well. Family certainly helps, except where it doesn't. I’m a huge supporter of the ways technology makes
our lives better, but I’m not convinced one single technology-based toy helps a
lick.

In short, you could make
your kids 3% better by hitting 100 of 100 constantly moving targets, but why would you when you can
do just fine hitting 50 of the targets?